An Unsung Hero in the Story of Interracial Marriage – The New Yorker
Hon. Denny Chin, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, alerted us to this article just published in The New Yorker that talks about the landmark US Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia which struck down as unconstitutional anti-miscegenation laws. The article brings out the little known role played by William Marutani, who argued on behalf of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), an amicus curiae in the case.
Marutani was later appointed by the Governor of Pennsylvania to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, becoming the first Asian American judge in Pennsylvania.
Our own trailblazer, Hon. Marilyn Go, clerked for Judge Muritani. She shared with us this link to the oral argument in Loving v. Virginia. You can both hear and read the transcript, including Judge Marutani arguing for JACL. It comes from oyez.org, a multi-media archive project of Chicago-Kent College of Law, with a mission to make the “Supreme Court of the United States accessible to everyone.”
With the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, we here at AABANY are truly blessed and grateful to have our esteemed jurists, Judge Chin and Judge Go, remind us of the contributions made by Asian American lawyers to the development of civil rights law in the United States. Let us not forget the struggles and triumphs of our trailblazers and predecessors for their role in paving the way to greater equality and justice for all. We need to follow and build on their example because the struggle continues.
